Friday, September 16, 2011

Seiji Maehara, who lost his bid to become the party leader and the prime minister of Japan, has nonetheless landed on a very powerful party position as the chairman of the DPJ's policy bureau.

He went to Fukushima, and after visiting with the evacuees from Iitate-mura, he disclosed his party's plan to use the "eco-point" system for residential housing to promote timber from the disaster-affected area.

Aggghhhhh.

What is the "eco-point" for houses? Well, if you build or renovate your house with energy saving features and alternative energy features (eg. solar panels) the government will give you "eco-points". Then you can use the points at participating stores and buy whatever you want to buy with the points.

Maehara is saying the government may entice builders to use the lumber from the disaster-affected area with "eco-points", even if the potentially radioactive lumber has nothing to do with energy saving.

Iitate-mura's major industry is forestry. Iitate-mura's mountains and forests have been contaminated with whatever fell on them - radioactive cesium, plutonium, strontium. No one has tested them (if someone did, he's not saying anything), but the contamination should be an order of magnitude bigger than the radioactive firewood from Rikuzen Takata City in Iwate Prefecture.

If Mr. Maehara has his way, the contaminated trees are to be cut from the contaminated mountains and hauled out of the mountains, disturbing the contaminated soil and dead leaves, and made into lumber in a village with high air radiation level and sold all over Japan with "eco-points", in order for the rest of the Japanese to help the villagers.

Seiji Maehara, chairman of the policy bureau of the Democratic Party of Japan, visited Fukushima City in the morning of September 17, and visited with the residents of Iitate-mura in their temporary houses. They evacuated to Fukushima City after the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant accident. In the dialog with the residents, Maehara apologized to them about Yoshio Hachiro, who resigned the post of Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry after his inappropriate remarks concerning the nuclear accident. Maehara said, "His words trampled down your feelings. As a member of the ruling party I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart".

The purpose of his visit was to incorporate the demands from the disaster-affected area into the 3rd supplementary budget plan for the fiscal 2011, which will be the budget for the recovery in earnest from the March 11 earthquake/tsunami disaster. Maehara responded to the decontamination request from the residents, by saying "We want to appropriate a large sum for the effort".

He also disclosed that he [or his party] is discussing the possibility of utilizing "residential eco-point system" if residential houses are built with lumber from the disaster-affected area. After the dialog with the Iitate-mura residents, he met with Governor Yuhei Sato. Governor Sato pointed out the slow response by the national government, and urged the creation of the recovery fund.

前原氏は午後、宮城県へ移動し、村井嘉浩知事らと会談。がれき処理状況も視察する。

Mr. Maehara will go to Miyagi Prefecture in the afternoon to have a talk with Governor Yoshihiro Murai. He is also scheduled to survey the debris clearing operation.

To the right-leaning and the US-favoring (and nuke-favoring) Sankei, Maehara is a darling, WikiLeaks or not.

"Oh it's just outside of the trees that is radioactive. In lumber, there will be no radiation, it's safe" will be the mantra. "Don't you want to help the victims of the accident?" will be another.

My answer: so what? and no. Not through buying their radioactive goods.

Iitate-mura's so-called "decontamination" of farmland and houses is expected to cost 200 billion yen, or US$2.6 billion. Part of the "decon" bubble, as Iitate-mura's "decontamination" is to be done by the national government and its researchers (as if they know anything about radiation decontamination on a massive scale), with the help of large general contractors.

26
comments:

I am completely finished with buying ANYTHING from Japan. Japan, to me, is finished. I cannot trust the government of this country to do anything right or tell the truth so I will, as painful as it is for me with my Japanese heritage, no longer have anything to do with it. If people of Japan cannot stop this by standing up to their corrupt government then they are truly finished. This is a sad era for Japan in history and the traitors have made themselves known.

Do people not understand radioactive timber from their forests would turn into radioactive wooden products for themselves? Can't believe it.Dear blog's owner, there's a mistyping after"From Sankei Shinbun (9/17/2011)" - there should be "chairman". Thou your neologism is not bad at all. ==Elena==

I break it down further,planting begins fifty miles out and then your radioactive sludges and burnings are stabilised as a concrete wall a few miles in as the geology dictates,planting continue over many years heading further towards the source.

This provides a means of containment and enterprise,it's the sane thing to do.

Precisely! Many years ago we read Van Wolferen's "The Enigma of Japanese Power" and tut-tutted at dysfunction and corruption in the system but for the most part didn't give much further thought because it didn't seem to affect us directly.

Well, with Fukushima the dysfunction and corruption have become something of a matter of life and death and, as EX-SKF so ably relays day in and day out, the response of the system has been: more of the same.

This is what has driven me to give up on Japan. If the powers that be here had responded to the Fukushima catastrophe in a manner that indicated some awareness of the problems that caused it and an ability to learn from them there would have been cause to hopeful about Japan's future. As it is, perhaps not.

I agree but the issue here is that all this events are affecting to other nations and citizens who used to live there and move out too.

Remember that Japanese Government when the Americans got to Okinawa in WWII, they told they own citizens to commit suicide better than to get captured... and family fathers obey this orders and ask their own sons to kill themselves.

This history has been erased from textbooks and ellite do not consent to talk about it...even do their own citizens remember all about this.History is repeating itself

Japanese people hide very well under they KATA, to those who do not know them.

In Fuku.case it sounds like the ellite want to clean up they own race as hitler wanted to do...

The guy is looking out of his window,kinda half expecting but also half dissapointed that so far Mosura has not shown up to do battle with the Atomic brained Tepco machine monster that is currently gobbling up Tyvec boil in the bag offerings and beaming mind control waves at TV comfort women.

If Mosura is busy elsewhere, then all the people better just rise up and retire this govt themselves.

Rather than wait so long they aren't healthy enough to do it, citizens should weed out the corporate/govt psychopaths:

move the culprits out of their mansions in safer areas, and move the nuclear refugees in.

TEPCO and all the past/present in govt who supported nuclear plants, and, this year's Radiation Coverup minions (like, those school administrators !!) can hand over their bank accounts and go live onsite.

You said it, kintaman:"If people of Japan cannot stop this by standing up to their corrupt government then they are truly finished."

What a waste of a land, and of future generations' health.

Meanwhile, the whole Northern Hemisphere is getting more and more fallout and bioaccumulation; spreading the harm to everyone.

these madmen,these lunatics seem so normal in cheap corporate suits..one gets the feeling they have already organized,new homes in one of the chinese ghost cities.if Seiji Maehara stays come the day of judgment i hope he and his like will be torn apart.The Danse Macabre.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcm1DYtGPNE

Laprimavera, do you think Maehara and his ilk really want to spread radioactivity around Japan? If not, how do you think they justify (to themselves) what they are saying?

It seems that all the elites are seriously out of touch with reality. Seriously: Kan helicoptering around Fukushima, breathing in the radioactive fumes; the head of TEPCO "apologizing" by saying "sorry, we've damaged our image and lost your trust, but don't worry, we'll soon put it right with a massive PR campaign!" They are like kids who've watched too much TV and just cannot grasp the severity of the situation.

As someone commented here earlier, perhaps this is how Japanese politics have always been, only now it's all out on public view. It's a seriously disturbing sight.

The Japanese philosophy is that a shared burden is a lighter burden for everyone. In the West, a shared burden is extending misery to more people.

If this was a virus outbreak, Fukushima pref. probably would have been isolated and cut off from the rest of country rigorously to avoid spreading the disease. Rationally speaking, this also needed to be done here. Nothing goes out, total quarantine except for people wanting to migrate. No goods.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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